Final Fantasy XIII-2 – Destructoid
Final Fantasy XIII was not a “4” for me, but I wouldn’t have given it much more credit. The story was, at times, confusing and very hard to follow, the proper nouns it used made my ears hurt, and the summoned, transforming Eidolons were so silly that I was embarrassed for Square Enix and videogames in general.
The biggest issue with the game was the lack of player choice, as the story literally pushed you forward through a one-way corridor into mindless, repetitive battles for the first 20 hours of gameplay. It’s as if Square Enix forgot about all the charm and complexity that made us fall in love with the series’ earlier games. The end result was a game that mostly played itself for a long time before it opened up. I still enjoyed it to some extent, but I probably would only recommend it to diehard Final Fantasy fans.
With this second direct sequel Square Enix has ever made for a Final Fantasy game, there was a chance to go back to the original design and fix many of the issues fans had with Final Fantasy XIII. I’m happy to tell you that Square Enix took this second chance and made the best of what they had to work with for Final Fantasy XIII-2.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PlayStation 3 [reviewed], Xbox 360)
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: January 31, 2012
MSRP: $59.99
Final Fantasy XIII‘s story kicked off with the surly, pink-haired, ex-soldier named Lightning fighting against her former military mates while dodging a civilian evacuation of her home planet, the floating planet named Cocoon. The evacuation and ongoing war between the citizens of Cocoon and the military faded into the background for Lightning, as she was solely focused on saving her sister, Serah, a girl considered to be an enemy of the military.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 sort of flips the story around to tell the next chapter; a story that picks up a few years after the ending of XIII.
Serah finds herself having strange dreams of her sister, lost in a dark world and stuck fighting against an unknown warrior for eternity. She also sees a young man in these dreams, and later comes to meet him.
He is Noel, a traveler from 700 years in the future where he lives as the last human born, and he has been tasked by Lightning to help Serah save the future. In a role switch, Serah is now out to save Lightning. Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s story centers around time travel. Somehow the whole timeline of history has been altered, resulting in multiple paradoxes. Serah and Noel work to hop through history to resolve these paradoxes with the hopes of setting the future straight so that humanity does not come to an end in 700 years.
I was worried when I first heard about XIII-2‘s story, as a sequel that uses a time travel gimmick could easily go very wrong. I imagined revisiting old locales, running through unimaginative missions in an attempt to get more mileage out of XIII‘s visual assets, with some nonsensical story strung throughout.
Although some assets are reused and some previous locales are revisited, there are plenty of new locations, characters, and enemies, while the time travel element actually ties nicely into the game’s story.
While this could have been a time travel turd, Square Enix was smart about how they handled old assets and quite crafty with how they laced this story through it. Instead of creating a sense of déjà vu, it ends up being quite fun hopping around time to check in on the last game’s characters, or see how a city has changed over the years. Thankfully you’re never lost in time, as there’s strong structure and plenty of less-than-subtle dialogue cues to guide you to the next era. There’s a lot to see and do, and it’s all open for you to freely explore at your leisure, but I never once found myself lost in time. At least you can’t call this one linear!
As smart as the aspect of time travel has been handled, I don’t want to give the story too much credit. It’s certainly stronger than Final Fantasy XIII‘s story, but since it was built on its predecessor’s uneven foundation, it never feels completely whole or in any way less nonsensical than before.
The overarching storyline does its best to work with what there was to work with and continue on with something that’s entertaining and sometimes surprising, but the smaller bits of story that center around unresolved time paradoxes rarely makes sense. I suppose some might say that these sections are intentionally strange, as they deal with a warping of time, but I feel like the time spent developing these segments could have been better spent on the background characters.
Unlike its predecessor, XIII-2 does a really good job of fleshing out its protagonists Serah and Noel, and you eventually grow to understand the antagonist and his motivations. However, the rest of the game’s cast are left there to dangle with little in the way of character development or backstory. While it’s nice to see old friends like Hope and Snow, they just sort of appear in the timeline and there are huge gaps of unfilled story that you’re left hanging on. Another returning character whom I won’t name to protect you from spoilers has no story development whatsoever, making me kind of mad that this character was even included.
If you want to get the most out of this game’s story, you’re going to have to dig, getting into the optional quests, hidden paradox endings, and in-menu log reading. Even then I suspect that most won’t be fully satisfied. It’s a shame, as Square Enix has packed some really strong ideas and character possibilities into the story.
Be warned that the game’s ending is easily spoiled. You won’t find spoilers in this review, but know that they’re out there, and they will come to find you once this game is released in the West. Get in, keep your head down, and see it for yourself! It’s a strong ending, though, and a real visual treat. I thought the game’s conclusion was thrilling and very surprising, but I’m sure others are going to take issue with how this one is wrapped up.
While the story didn’t turn out to be as strong, Square Enix has made major improvements in storytelling over the last game. The dialogue is a major high point in XIII-2; it actually makes sense now, and the writing is much more accessible and lighthearted.
New Live Trigger events momentarily stop the story and ask you how you would respond to a question to steer the dialogue, taking a page from Western RPGs.
Noel and Serah are very strong characters, supported by exemplary voice work that highlights the motivations and emotions of the title’s protagonists at all times. Laura Bailey surprises as Serah and Liam O’Brien brings the badass to character Caius, but Jason Marsden absolutely knocks it out of the park with Noel, bringing a great balance of strength and humor. Even the NPC voicing is good and compared to Final Fantasy XIII, the contrast is surprising. Even if you don’t fully understand all of what the story throws at you, you will likely be entertained by the dialogue and voice work.
Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s gameplay positively shines when compared to its predecessor. Gone are the narrow corridors that run you into forced battles with faceless soldiers. XIII-2‘s time traveling nature leaves you wide open to explore, bouncing from era to era to take on missions and quests at your own pace.
There is a solid story structure with navigable timeline called the Historia Crux, but you’re mostly free to conquer it in any order. Time gates open up in each locale, and when you’ve found the proper Artefact in each era, you’re free to use them at gates to open up new locales. Most of these places are open, expansive worlds packed with hidden items, fighting challenges, NPC quests, and lots of extra story bits. Once you find all the Artefacts and open all the Time Gates, the entire game’s timeline is at your fingertips, as a simple press of the start button pulls you back to the Historia Crux, letting you jump to any time and place you wish. You’re also free to stop anywhere you’d like as Final Fantasy XIII-2 breaks new ground for the series with a save anywhere option, assigned to the Start button.
There are plenty of other new gameplay additions that help make this game much more entertaining than XIII. Final Fantasy’s cutest monster, the Moogle, makes a triumphant return to the series in XIII-2.
A Moogle named Mog comes to Serah as a gift from Lightning, and he serves many purposes. By default, he’s a flying companion that can help find hidden items with his glowing bobble, or work as an item retriever when thrown. Yes, you can throw your Moogle! Right before battle, Mog gives you a sort of clock meter that lets you preemptively attack to get the jump on random encounters, a sort of replacement for the series’ time-based battle spells. Strangely, in battle, Mog transforms into Serah’s primary weapon.
Item hunters will be obsessed with finding the game’s 160 Fragments. Some are tied to the story, but most are optional hunts. Tracking them down is definitely worth your time as they can be plugged into the game’s Fragment Skill system. This serves as a sort of limited God Mode for Final Fantasy XIII-2, letting you tweak things like how much your items sell for in shops, or how high/long your character can jump. Everything from options to tweak the encounter rate to a switch that opens up hidden story bits can be found among the Fragment Skills.
Some of the story-required item questing missions do get close to getting out of hand, though. One in particular requires way too much traveling and fetching, and it smells slightly of filler.
When you want a break from item hunting and time traveling, XIII-2‘s Serendipity zone should serve as a nice distraction. Anyone that enjoyed Final Fantasy VII‘s Golden Saucer will find a lot to like here. This lost-in-time casino is packed with scantily clad bunny girls, slot machines, casino table games, and even chocobo racing. The latter diversion is so deep that it almost could be turned into its own game, with options for leveling, betting and training. Gambling and race winnings can be traded in for rare game items.
As welcome as many of the gameplay changes are, I’m not as thrilled about the addition of puzzles to the mix. Hopping from era to era, the game sometimes throws you into a puzzle world with little to no explanation. The story calls them Temporal Rifts, and they’re supposed to be voids in the timeline that reach out into alternate dimensions — only by solving their puzzles can the timeline be set straight.
Unfortunately, many of these puzzles are dull, with many of them having you walk between jewels to sort of connect the dots. They seem to serve no purpose, and have no connection to the storyline. Thankfully, there are only a few instances of Temporal Rifts throughout the game.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes its predecessor’s battle system and runs with it, which is great because the battle system was easily the best part of that game. The Paradigm Shift system is still in place this time around, and with it comes its wonderful mix menus and fast-paced action. Again, the key battles make excellent use of lesser used Final Fantasy spells and effects. For instance, Poison is actually effective on bosses. Likewise, casting defense altering spells, like Deshell and Deprotect, is a valid strategy now. Paradigm Shift is faster this time around, with almost direct switching from one paradigm to the next, letting you shift tactcs on the fly without waiting for change animations.
There’s one new damage type in XIII-2 called Wound, and receiving this type of damage subtracts from your total maximum available hit points in a battle. But, at its core, the battle system here is largely the same as that of Final Fantasy XIII‘s, so if you hated that one you’re not going to like this one much more.
One of the best additions to the game play this time around is the ability to recruit monsters to your party. This works a lot like the demon collecting system in Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei games, and it’s every bit as open to customization. This monster party member system lets you take in an enemy, level it up, tweak its abilities, and then use it to maximize your battle strategies. Your chosen monster becomes your third party member, and up to three different monsters can be plugged into your paradigms to be used at any time.
Each monster has its own special attack, which becomes available after filling an attack meter. Collected monsters also have their own Crystarium, letting you level them up, change their abilities and even transfer abilities from one monster to another.
This incredibly deep system lets you create your dream party. I took in a Chocobo early on in a battle, trained him, leveled him up to a ridiculous level, and liked him so much that he dealt what looked to be the final blow in the very last battle. He was a beast, and his special screaming “Kweh” attack never stopped being funny.
Cinematic Action sequences are also new to the Final Fantasy series, making their debut in this game. These are prompted battle inputs that give players some control of interactive cutscenes — quick time events, if you will. Most of these take place during battles, where standard fighting seamlessly transitions into a scene that, if timed correctly, will let players avoid attacks, stagger an enemy or deliver flashy final hits. Most of these sequences are flat-out awesome, with all the dynamic camera work and flashy lighting you’d expect from a Final Fantasy cutscene. There isn’t a penalty for missing prompted button and stick inputs during these sequences, but there’s often a benefit that could make your battle easier, and perfect performance brings about an item reward.
Even those that didn’t care for Final Fantasy XIII had to admit that it was a beautiful game, and in some ways XIII-2 is even more impressive. Realtime cutscenes replace pre-rendered ones in this game, and the animation and attention to detail are outstanding in them. You’ll see how a gentle wind catches a character’s hair and clothing, and you’ll really connect with character’s expressive faces and gestures. The lip synchronization is the best I’ve ever seen, to point where I wonder why the rest of the game industry isn’t borrowing Square Enix’s technology. The game’s scenery is, as always, imaginative and often beautiful, and the lighting and weather effects are stunning. There’s a rare odd background texture, and a couple of the early cutscenes seemed to take a framerate hit, but these are just nitpicks in what is otherwise a visual powerhouse. Trust me, you’ve never seen this much pink and purple in a videogame.
Shopping in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is really weird; you won’t find the traditional RPG town store here.
Instead you’ll find a being that looks to be part human female, part Chocobo, with plenty of exposed skin, but feathers covering her crotch, breasts and arms. Oh, and her hat appears to be a dead chocobo head. She calls herself Chobolina and she travels through time to be right where you need her when you need her most. She sells typical healing items as well as weapons and upgrades. Her prices never change and the selection rarely does either, but what she has to say to you every time you encounter her does, and it’s almost always hilarious. Sometimes she screams “Choco-boco-lina” when you see her. Other times she becomes philosophical and talks about how she’s not quite human. It’s almost as if Square Enix is using Chobolina to apologize for how terrible shopping was in Final Fantasy XIII. The real gift from Square Enix comes when the inevitable Chobolina cosplay trend begins this year.
I suspect that fans will be divided on Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s musical score.
I thought it was wonderfully varied and lots of fun, but traditionalists will likely take issue with some of the stranger selections. Square Enix let three composers team up and go absolutely nuts on this soundtrack, and from the sound of it, they had a great time. In the mix you’ll find many different musical genres, ranging from standard orchestral to metal. Battle songs with rapping or overworld themes with J-pop style vocals are mildly surprising when they first appear, but nothing can prepare you for the screaming vocals of one of the key battle songs. The soundtrack has multiple Chocobo themes, but the heavy metal one is my favorite. Even if you’re not sold on some of the more alternative tracks, just about all should be able to appreciate how map themes smartly morph into battle songs when an enemy is encountered. Among the oddball tracks you’ll find some outstanding work. Overall, I think the idea with the music was to have fun and go nuts.
I’ve heard the same question many times in the last few months: Will those disappointed by Final Fantasy XIII enjoy this sequel? I think so.
In fact, it seems like Final Fantasy XIII-2 was made with these people in mind as it seems to address many of the criticisms of its predecessor. Many of the best aspects of this game seem to be direct responses to concerns raised on the last game, so now the combat is deeper, the customization options are wide open, and the pacing is sensible and anything but linear. Lack of substance? Not here, I’m glad to say. The story, while still a bit stunted in the character development department, is vast, and now offers a lot in the way of player choice. There’s better writing for better characters, and the performances for these characters are outstanding.
But, overall, for me, what really made Final Fantasy XIII-2 an enjoyable game was that Square Enix brought the fun back. They brought back some the inventiveness, creativity, humor and uniqueness that we sorely missed in Final Fantasy XIII. Maybe this game tries to do a bit too much, and it’s probably too late to dig this story out of the hole that it’s in, but it was made with a heaping dollop of that undeniable charm that we loved in the older series games, and that goes a long way towards making it enjoyable.
Nice comeback, Square Enix.
RPG Review: Final Fantasy XIII-2
This is now the WORST Final Fantasy game I have ever played so this review ain’t gonna be pretty. Therefore, if you actually enjoyed this game, I suggest turning away now because it’s just gonna be a diarrhea of reasons why I think this game is terrible. As we learned in the past, most stories that feature time travel and time paradoxes never end well.
Let’s start with the 2 good things about this game that I liked.
24 year old Hope-kyun
Adult Hope-kun wasn’t just an ikeman, but he was also EXTREMELY helpful to Sera and Noel the whole game. He did so much technological research and progression and even left hidden message for them to discover 700 years later.
He constantly talked about how he wants to save Light-san and everyone and I just love him and honestly he is the only reason I kept playing through this dumpster fire.😒 And the 2nd thing I like about this game is unlike the first game, if your party leader dies – it just changes party leader so you can res everyone back up without the battle ending so your party members actually mattered in a sense in case somehow you got 1 shot (which for some reason I did several times on the last boss fight.) Also, they added a feature that let you save at any time in the game which was helpful when the game crashed 20 times on me.
And now for all the things I freaking hate about this game!
The Time Travel Bullshit is CONFUSING AS FUCK
Bye.
Instead of it being a linear – walk down hallway style game that despite the many people hating – I actually enjoyed – this game is all over the place. You go to area 1, get some item in a box, fight some durdles, open a gate, go to another area.
The areas open in completely random places with no rhyme or reason. The worst of it was when I got to the Tomato Flan boss where I had tried to fight him twice, but got instantly killed both times because I had to first go to area B, fight boss Z, pet some sheep, pick up some hidden box and then that somehow magically turned the tomato boss tiny and made him easily defeatable. Whut? Then you couldn’t even unlock certain areas unless you had Gate Key C from area G and only then you could unlock if you defeated the boss in area H. I was able to pretty much play the first game blindly but in this one I had to actually pull up a guide telling me where to go and what the fuck to do. Sometimes the quest markers would be on the map labeled as a ( ! ) but then you’d go to it – and nothing would happen. You then had to go back to the time gate area (Historia Crux) in which you had to randomly look at which area you may have not visited yet, go there, and hope some new cut scene would pop up. ಠ_ಠ
There are rage inducing puzzles for no fucking reason
Wtf?
Oh boy don’t even get me started on how much bullshittery this game had.
There are 3 specific areas of this game that not only irritated me, but made me almost wanna rage quit the game mid way. The first one are the idiotic “solve the time paradox” puzzles in which you connect the stupid dots. Okay, annoying, but easy and doable. The next one though, involved some kind of stupid clock which made absolutely NO sense to me. You had to pick the numbers on the clock, the clock hands would then change to another set of numbers and you keep doing that until you’ve “stepped” on all the numbers. I managed to yolo the first 3 times, but the last one I had to actually pull up some guy’s website and put the clock numbers in and it literally solved the puzzle for me. W T F. ಠ_ಠ
Who the fuck was high enough to create this shit?
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was this utter garbage final boss puzzle. It basically had a bunch of rotating platforms and you had to jump between them to activate some glowy cubes to then rotate OTHER platforms and make your way to the boss room at the end of the map.
Okay, fine, this is shit, but I can eventually figure it out with some trial and error – EXCEPT LITERALLY THE MOMENT I SPIN MY CAMERA I AM ATTACKED BY TRASH MOBS. THE MOMENT I GO IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION TO TRY ANOTHER WAY OUT – I GET ATTACKED. THE MOMENT I LITERALLY MOVE 1 FOOT, I GET ATTACKED. WHAT THE FUCK SDHGLKJGHSJDK Honestly it was actually worse than FFX in a sense where in FFX I could turn battles off or speed through them. In here? I had to fight so much that by the time I got to the final boss I had maxed out 2 jobs on Sera and Noel without even trying. It was specifically this one platform:
F this shit
Holy shit I don’t even know where to begin with how idiotic that platform was. The fact that it aws in the middle too which you would often jump on to try and figure out the best way out means you spent more time wasted fighting trash than you did actually figuring out where to go. The other thing I was lucky to have was the jump skill which you acquire by turning in some Fragments at the Gold Saucer Serendipity.
If you didn’t have this jump skill jumping on these platforms would probably be a real shit show – again another thing that the game doesn’t really tell you until the very end and then forces you to go looking for this shit in other timezones/worlds when you are literally a few stupid jumps away from the final boss. ಠ_ಠ None of the guides I found for this were helpful in any way so I ended up just kinda figuring it out on my own between 50 trash fights.😒
The Pet System is Bullshit
I shoulda used Marcus more often
So in the first game you have your team you can set up of actual people and do their skills etc. In this game, you are always only Serah, Noel and – a monster pet. Depending on what kind of monster pet it is, it can be a specific job. For example I had a Cait Sith who was a healer and a Chocobo who was Commander. At first it just seems kinda like a little sidekick, as in you don’t REALLY need their help to finish battles. It’s almost like a cute addon. As you get further in the game though, it’s painfully obvious that you need to grind out GOOD monsters and grind gil and spend tons of money trying to get a really good pet to help you fight the final boss.
Unfortunately I could not be assed and I wanted to get this game overwith ASAP so I finished the game with a level 61 Cait Sith Healer (named Crumpet) and a level 56 Chocobo named Buttercup. Buttercup’s AI was utterly braindead and he would constantly attack things that me and Noel were not attacking so when we would get one of the final boss’s adds staggered we needed all the help we could get to burn it down but no. Buttercup is on the other add with buffs and doing like no damage. THANKS YOU BIRD BRAIN. Then there’s Crumpet. Oh Crumpet you useless nyanko. I spent half these boss fights raising him because his HP was so abysmally low (because there’s literally only like 2 heal pets in the whole game and I didn’t bother raising a 2nd one since I spent so much gil on the first one!). The final boss fight took me 40 minutes because the stupid cat kept dying and I was busy raising him instead of actually damaging the boss. In retrospect, I should have just used my tank pet, which had like 8000 HP to give us shields instead.
That or I should have raised a Saboteur pet instead because healer pets are crap. This is further intensified in the “end game” content where if you don’t have a good pet (I saw some guy on youtube have a damn Behemoth) you literally cannot complete anything. But oh hey at least I could give them cute accessories and names amirite? 🙄
The Music is Awful
Well that is unless you actually enjoy listening to Death Metal! If you watch the video above, this is an example of music you hear in a lot of boss fights as well. Some of the background music in some of the areas was some terrible rap lyrics as well. Overall it was just so awful compared to the music in the first game I’m just like ??? Who the hell made this creative decision?? ಠ_ಠ
The Steam Port is UTTER GARBAGE
Noel needs some skin care ASAP
Ohh boy this is a good one.
First of all, when I began playing the game it crashed twice in a span of 30 minutes. Because of that I had to redo the first battle at least 3 times until I googled up and found out that apparently playing with Steam Cloud on will always crash the game. Once I turned it off it was a little more stable, then I found out the hard way that changing between headphones and speakers ALSO crashes the game. After that I basically saved after every couple trash mob fights, any cut scenes and any boss fights. I HAD TO BASICALLY SAVE EVERY 5 MINUTES BECAUSE I WAS LITERALLY AFRAID THE WHOLE TIME THE GAME WAS GONNA CRASH ON ME AGAIN. (ノ ﾟ溢゜)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:.┻┻:･’.:∵ The other problem I had was the graphics. Look at Noel’s face above WTF? When I look at some people’s PS3/XBOX videos they don’t look this horrible but for some odd reason every single weird detail is clearly visible in the PC version that it makes it painful to look at. Most characters were okay but Noel looked like crap from start to finish except in the nicely animated CG scenes:
If only he was this hot in his game model lmao
The other annoyance I had was with the controller – I was used to using the PS4 dualshock but the game only supported an XBOX controller which I am very unfamiliar with.
Fortunately thanks to DS4 windows I was able to remap my buttons – but I had to keep an image file next to my game at all times to remember what the hell I changed all the buttons to 😂😂😂
Somhow I doubt Lightning Returns supports DS4 as well so I am likely to continue using my handy dandy jpg above for a little bit longer. 😂😂
The Balance of Enemies in Fields is Awful
Go away Seymour Caius 😂
Since the battles in this game are unavoidable for the most part the placement of enemies in each area becomes extra irritating. For example, when I was in 400AF Academia, I was following the story and exploring the map, then I ran into some huge monster that 1 shot me. Apparently that’s an end game monster that I am not even supposed to fight until later. This happened several times by the way. Then there was the opposite problem of where I had to return to some worlds to find some random quest item, and was forced to fight low level trash that took SECONDS to kill but was a huge waste of time because I had to keep killing on my way to get my “item”.
In FFXIV for example, once you are 10 levels above an enemy, they will simply not attack you because what’s the point? You don’t get any exp. Here, doesn’t matter. Whether an enemy is too high or too low, you will still be attacked. And on the topic of enemies – HMPH YUEL (Caius) was the Seymour of this game, and I am pretty sure I must have killed him like 10 times in the entire span of playing it. (BTW his Japanese voice was god awful – his English one was actually better, but I preferred Japanese voices for pretty much everyone else so I stuck to the Japanese dub lmao.)
The Ending is Shit, The side ends are Shit and the DLC is Shit
I….I just died in your arms toniighttt~~♪
So yea if you played this game, or didn’t play it and wanna get spoiled – you know that the ending is bad. We literally have Lightning onee-san give Serah a moogle bow, go on this tedious idiotic puzzle time travel adventure, only to have Hmph Yuel, Yuel herself and Serah die and the world be in chaos.
COOL WHAT DID I JUST WASTE 30 HOURS OF MY LIFE FOR!? Not only that but apparently there’s also like 8 “Paradox” endings which are alternative endings (like you know bad ends in an otome game) but you can’t just easily pick a choice and see the ending. (Well you can for like 2 of them.) 6 of those endings require you to GGRRRINDD your party (and pet) to be high enough to defeat Hpmh-Yuel another 6 times in order to see some 2 minute alternative ending where Vanilla turns into a table ornament or Snow finally gets some (inter)action with his fiance 😂
Game writers pretending to care that Snow x Serah is a thing when literally nobody else does
Honestly in my headcanon, Serah and Noel are a much better pairing though I guess I can see people shipping Noel and Yuel but she died like way too many times and Caius would go yandere if she was NTRed from him probably. 😂😂😂😂 The only DLC ending that made sense (which I watched on youtube because I was not gonna fight Seymour Hmph-Yuel for the 11th time) was the one with Lightning and Serah.
oneesama~あら～
Basically what we saw in the normal ending where Serah just straight up and dropped dead, we saw what “really happened” where her soul gets sucked in by Yuel inside Valhalla and Lightning joins her on the throne..or some shit. I don’t know. I don’t get it, hopefully Lightning Returns will actually explain this sack of shite to me. ಠ_ಠ The other inconsistent crap was at the very end Sazh randomly showed up with his son. How in the fuck? I thought aside from Hope and Alyssa, everyone else just you know…died of old age. Also they never explained why in the hells name Snow became an l’Cie again or who made him one. I SURE LOVE PLOTHOLES LOL
Wow hello?
And if he and his son are magically alive how come Vanilla and Fang are still dead the whole time? They literally show up 1 time to wake up Serah from her dream and the best we get is some half assed bullshit DLC where Vanilla is still a table ornament:
Legit sad I couldn’t get this AKB48 DLC for Serah cause it’s nicer than pretty much all her outfits lmao
Anyway final thoughts – DO NOT RECOMMEND.
I feel as if this game ruined whatever happy thought I had left behind in the first game. A lot of people complained about the first game but oddly enjoyed this one and im just
In fact I would instead suggest to watch someone’s movie cut scene play throughs of the game instead, particularly this dude here even includes the Paradox endings and the DLC cut scenes and endings which I thankfully watched and saved myself a whole lot of grinding. In the meantime if you wanna see ridiculous clips of my “adventures” feel free to check out my Twitch collection as usual!
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Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review | GameMAG
The original Final Fantasy XIII was released in March 2010 and did not live up to many years of expectations. The absolute linearity of what is happening, the holey plot and annoying Vanilla drove nails into the coffin of the once-cult series formed after the collapse of Square Soft .
The game received a wave of negativity among the once-devout fan community and garnered mixed reviews and comments in the press. As a result, the sale of the direct continuation of the game — Final Fantasy XIII-2 — turned out to be much lower than predicted.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 starts great. The main character of the original — Lightning — appears before us in a new guise — in the form of the keeper of the goddess Etro, from whose blood people originated. Somewhere on the edge of time, a great battle between the armies of good and evil takes place, in which Lightning takes a direct part. This battle is reminiscent of the most driving moments of the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children , because these scenes are either completely or partially copied from there. A new antagonist named Caius who fights Lightning is voiced by an amazing voice actor who provided the voice for War from Darksiders and Weiss from Nier .
Other new heroes — Noel and Eul are no less interesting. Their stories are captivating and fresh, but the creators give them too little time, focusing all their attention on the most faded character in the series — Sera, Lightning’s sister. She is the main character0003 FF XIII-2 .
The placement of the wrong accents in the plot is supported by a set of stupid dialogues and unsuccessful staging. Although all the heroes and the player figured out the plot plot at an early stage, the main character, a silly fool, cannot believe in the reality of what is happening and realize the obvious for half the game.
« Am I awake? No, it’s probably all a dream! Or not a dream? Oh, I don’t know what to do! Lightning is alive! Although it may not be alive! I don’t know! What if this is all a dream? No, it’s probably not a dream. And yet I’m not sure. Lightning is alive, I know it! Should I trust Noel when he tells me that Lightning is alive? It’s probably still a dream0027 »…
The priority on Sera’s endless moaning from scratch and the pathetic attempts of the developers to give it seriousness against the background of three really interesting characters who are given a gulkin’s nose in the plot cause slight bewilderment.
In addition to the flawed narrative, FF XIII-2 has the weakest soundtrack in the history of the series. If I had minor quibbles with the musical accompaniment of the original (mostly it concerned the unprincipled jazz playing on the planet Gran Pulse), then the musical arrangement of the second part is only suitable for the Kazakh “Minute of Glory”. Cheap metal with chocobo vocals and weird Pop ruin the game’s few enjoyable moments. nine0009
The game process was also granted for the celebration of mediocrity and failure. The combat system has finally lost all its charm and tactical depth. To win, you must monotonously press the «A» button. Here you don’t even need to change the paradigms of the heroes — almost all enemies are taken out by a rack of three swordsmen to an ideal rating. Very rarely, mostly with bosses, you have to change paradigms to three magicians or a combination with a medic. You can forget about the professions of a defender, saboteur and synergist at all and, due to an overabundance of experience points, pump them only to increase the general parameters of the heroes.
Unlike Final Fantasy XIII , where it was important to constantly think about the chosen specializations and change them several times in battles, the challenge in the sequel is built on the basis of the capabilities of students in the lower grades of blondes, who are not far removed in intelligence from the main character of the game.
The local saleswoman Chokolina deserves a special mention. Half swimsuit model, half chocobo, she haunts the characters through space and time, sells goods at inflated prices, and throws out exclusively absurd phrases. There are no other ways to get new weapons in the game. nine0009
But not everything in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is bad. Fans of the cult jRPG series « Pokemon » will be happy to collect and upgrade monsters. Each of them has their own class and abilities, so they easily take on the role of the third hero of the party in battles. The battles themselves are diluted with a kind of research and solving puzzles, which come in several forms: mathematical, graphic and logical.
There are interesting and unusual game snippets, like riding a monster, moogle rolls, a casino with various mini-games, quizzes and even running in style Alan Wake from one light source to another. In addition, the structure of locations has changed and, finally, is not one endless corridor. There are cities, many forks and various settlements with NPCs and side quests.
However, even here the developers miscalculated. The game world practically does not react to the heroes in any way and is populated by clones. Therefore, it is only possible to understand which heroes can give you a task and which cannot, if you methodically go around all the NPCs in a row. The tasks themselves are almost all related to the search for various items or characters hidden in locations. They are as primitive as can be and are no match for last year’s Deus Ex from the same Square-Enix and other top games of the genre.
In addition, the heavy bias towards add-ons is disappointing.
Without buying them, you simply cannot open many mini-games in the casino.
On the same scale — an absurd story, replicated temporal paradoxes with which the developers mend all plot holes, a stupid main character, vulgar music, a simplified combat system and the indifference of the creators to the really interesting heroes of the game kill all interest in the passage of this offspring of the once great company. On the other hand — beautiful graphics with a stunning technogenic city « Academy «, phenomenal pre-rendered cutscenes, an interesting time travel system, research, Caius and darling Lightning slightly pull Final Fantasy XIII-2 , but are not able to return the series to the rank of projects Triple-A class. Which is just sad.
Author: ACE Editing: XTR, OPEX
Tested version for Xbox 360
Final Fantasy 13-2 review
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The creators of Final Fantasy once prided themselves on recreating a new world every time. Certainly with huge Chocobo chickens and other … «little things.» In any case, this did not fit into the head of a simple European player, who was used to the fact that the continuation is the same thing, only in a different way. Experiments have led to the fact that the appearance of the XIII-2 series no longer surprises anyone. A sort of major branch, work on the bugs and explanation of many unresolved issues. Although, believe me, there will be even more of them. This tricky «two-of-a-kind move» is perfectly played up by the new plot — the characters constantly travel through time, discovering parallel universes. That is, in fact, Final Fantasy 13-3, «13-4» and «13-13 … 13» may well exist. nine0009
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Before we get caught up in the cycle of worlds, let’s take a look at the special section for beginners. Here, as briefly as possible, the authors are trying to explain the history of the thirteenth part — there are no special videos, but the retelling is quick and almost understandable to an outsider.
The new story is dedicated to Sera — Lightning’s sister and Noel — a person from the future, who is tormented by the problems of the past, present, future and incredible. Time travel is incredibly serious — this is not Ivan Vasilievich or Back to the Future. According to tradition, heroes curse everything that exists for days on end, are surprised at everything new and try to find out from anyone what they are doing and whether they are doing the right thing. nine0009
It looks like a description of a player who has been doing everything according to the instructions for the second day, but did not understand anything. The fact is that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is one of those projects that are allowed to reveal all the beauty not earlier than the seventh hour of the game somewhere in the third and a half act. After, in every sense, a brisk start, there comes a protracted period of acquaintances and memories. Along the way, innovations are presented to you — you take monsters into a group, train them and gradually strengthen them.
You will be treated by a cat in a basket, and a Chocobo or something more terrible will become a replacement for the classic guards for a long time. This time, the players were given more freedom — if they wish, the heroes can slip away from the oncoming monsters. Although this is freedom «in Japanese», with a bunch of numbers and rulers across the screen — for example, to survive, you will have to select combat tactics, changing them on the go. nine0009
Then you are suddenly thrown into an interesting world inhabited by mutant tomatoes. Another curious place opens next, and you realize that you have finally overcome the beginner’s barrier. The interlocutors are reluctant to explain what is happening. The answer you choose for once can affect the passage. The game seems to wake up and speed up the pace — random encounters with monsters are replaced by a massacre that cannot be avoided. At the tenth hour, you realize that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is turning into overcoming barriers to viewing cutscenes.
You almost don’t have to think about weapons and equipment — once every few hours, the merchant offers exactly one more powerful weapon. One by one, magical abilities open up with the development of the profession — you don’t even have to choose anything. If desired, the entire battle can be set to automatic and occasionally change tactics. So on an easy difficulty level, you can press one button all day long. And on the average — get to the fullest from the bosses and run around the neighborhood to pump. By the way, having defeated another whopper, made up of three animals and a robot, you should not relax. If you miss the quick-time event, the battle will have to be played again — «so that everything is beautiful.» nine0009
We already wrote about how «nice» the game turned out in the «preview». Even the saddest moments are accompanied by Muggle muttering «Kupo-kupo». At least our funny friends and cute beaver-like cat stay at the very beginning. And the Muggle can be thrown away for at least ten seconds — he even likes it.
